SOURCE: BBC
DATE: September 12, 2019
SNIP: A historic global agreement aimed at halting deforestation has failed, according to a report.
An assessment of the New York Declaration on Forests (NYDF) says it has failed to deliver on key pledges.
Launched at the 2014 UN climate summit, it aimed to half deforestation by 2020, and halt it by 2030.
Yet deforestation continues at an alarming rate and threatens to prevent the world from preventing dangerous climate change, experts have said.
The critique, compiled by the NYDF Assessment Partners (a coalition of 25 organisations), painted a bleak picture of how the world’s forests continue to be felled.
“Since the NYDF was launched five years ago, deforestation has not only continued – it has actually accelerated,” observed Charlotte Streck, co-founder and director of Climate Focus, which co-ordinated the publication of the report.
The report says the amount of annual carbon emissions resulting from deforestation around the globe are equivalent to the greenhouse gases produced by the European Union.
On average, an area of tree cover the size of the United Kingdom was lost every year between 2014 and 2018.